CBI gives clean chit to Gavit on mafia link

TNNAug 26, 2006, 03.51am IST

NEW DELHI: Minister of state for home Manikrao Gavit, who was named in a TV channel sting operation as allegedly having links with a jailed mafia don, has been given a clean chit by the CBI. Union home minister Shivraj Patil told Lok Sabha on Friday that the government would institute an inquiry to ascertain just whose voice it was on the tapes purpoted to contain a conversation between Mr Gavit and the mafia don.

A news channel had aired a report on August 13 in which it claimed to have tapes of a reported phone conversation between Mr Gavit and mafia don Sundar Singh Bhati who is imprisoned in Bulandshar in Uttar Pradesh.

Informing the Lok Sabha on the progress of a preliminary enquiry into the matter instituted by the CBI, Mr Patil told members that the agency had collected tapes from the news channel and also recorded statements of persons connected with the case.

In a bid to clear Mr Gavit of the charges made by the news report, Mr Patil explained to the House that the CBI had collected voice samples of Mr Gavit on tape in the presence of independent witnesses and experts of the Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL).

"The voices on the tapes were examined on audio spectrography by experts who have opined that they do not tally and are not of the same person," Mr Patil said. He also presented the experts' report on the table of the House.

The home minister said the government would now find out if the mafia don featured in the news report had indeed been speaking to someone, and if so, how did he come to possess a phone while in prison. Mr Patil, however, added that this would take some time.

After Patil's statement, Speaker Somnath Chatterjee said Mr Gavit has been exonerated and asked him to return to the House. Mr Gavit, who was sitting in the back row, then moved to the front benches.

Interestingly, politicians across party lines had come out in support of Mr Gavit after the report on the sing operation was aired. The political class, which has been at the receiving end of sting operations, had decided in an all-party meeting to leave it to the government to probe the alleged links between Mr Gavit and the mafia don.

Even NDA leaders, who could have tried to embarrass the government on the issue, were seen vouching for Mr Gavit's claim that the voice on the tape was not his.